Probably One of the Most Devoted Fans in St. Louis Blues Hockey History Has Died

They called him "Mr. Hockey."

When 72-year-old Ronald H. Schmidt of Mehlville died in his sleep early Tuesday morning, the St. Louis Blues lost not just a fan. They lost a fan who attended the franchise's first home game in 1967 and who came to know announcers, journalists and Hall-of-Famers alike simply by showing up, almost without fail, for 43 straight seasons.
 
Inside the old Arena, you could've found "Mr. Hockey" up in seat 14 or 15 of section 227A, where he learned all his fellow season-ticket holders' first names. He liked sitting up high so he could watch the plays develop, says his son John, who's now 45 and lives in Arizona but accompanied his dad to games as a boy.
Schmidt always got a slice of pizza and a Pepsi and rarely spoke during the action. "He didn't holler too often,"  John recalls, "but when he did, he had a voice that carried a long way." One of Schmidt's repeated sources of frustration was referee Ron Wicks. "I'm sure Wicks heard it."

John says his dad was chummy with announcer Gus Kyle, and in later years, Bruce Affleck. He counted players Bob Plager and Garry Unger among his friends. John even remembers hockey legends Bobby Orr, Glenn Hall and Stan Mikita popping up in section 227A when they were in town, just to say hello to his father.

Sportscasters Bill Davis (then of Channel 4) and Ron Jacober (formerly of Channel 5) sought out Schmidt for sound bites. "A lot of those reporter guys all sat real close by our section," John remembers.  "I guess after a period of time, they noticed [Dad] was there all the time."

Schmidt always got a ride or carpooled to the games, John says, because he refused to get behind the wheel of any vehicle for most of his adult life. (A car struck him and fractured his skull when he was a young man, which John believes permanently spooked him).

A graduate of University City High School and Washington University, Schmidt served in the Navy during the Berlin Airlift, married Lois Mae Watson in 1963, then worked as cartographer for the Department of Defense until about 2000, helping create maps of the moon for the Apollo space program, then decades later, maps used for Operation Desert Storm. When he worked late shifts at the office, he would listen to Blues games on the radio. 

As Parkinson's disease took its toll on Schmidt in recent years, he began leaving games after a period or two, John recalls. "That really upset him," he says.

Schmidt's widow Lois says she's asked their season-ticket representative to see about placing some kind of plaque on their seats in the Scottrade Center to memorialize her late husband.